The furniture is “mismatched.” A green Kermit the frog, along with an assortment of other fuzzy puppets, perches by the front door. And a portrait of a beloved black Lab hangs alongside a picture of Jocelyn and Jed Gorlin’s three children.
The memorabilia the Gorlins have collected from traveling around the world and portraits of their loved ones are a big part of what makes their house in Hopkins feel like a home, Jocelyn said.
It was this search for their own identity within such a storied home — a New England-style colonial built by the Gluek family of Minnesota brewery and restaurant fame — that inspired yet confounded them when they purchased the house 27 years ago. The Gorlins wanted to be loving stewards of the home while at the same time making it their own. With the last of the major projects recently wrapped up, it feels full circle.
“[Our contractors] told us your house will speak to you and will tell you what it wants, and my husband thought that was wildly funny at the time,” she said. “But it was true because you shouldn’t go into a house and just renovate it.”
Surprise visit
According to an article in the Gorlin family’s archive, the six-bedroom, five-bathroom house was hailed as the “three-chimney house” after it was built in 1939, with white clapboard exterior, green shutters and a pitched roof.
Inside, big French doors open into the dining room and arched doorways connect the kitchen to the living room. Upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom are tucked away in a wing of the house, connected by a common area. The house has four fireplaces — two on the main level, one in the primary bedroom and another in the basement.
Over the years, the Gorlins repurposed rooms to cater to their family’s needs. In the basement, the brewing family, perhaps not surprisingly, built a bar with a serving window and tap. When the Gorlins were raising their three children in the home, they turned the taproom into a play space that their kids called the Pioneer Room because of the Lincoln log-like walls.
Ten years ago, the couple received a surprise visit from Bob Gluek, who grew up in the house and even brought the Gorlins a gift: a painting of the house that was used as a proposed outline for landscaping in the front yard when the home was built. The Gorlins have hung the painting in their updated kitchen, one of the many ways they’ve balanced honoring the history while making the house their own.